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ChurchTechArts is the most widely-read and trusted website for production technology in the house of worship category. No-nonsense equipment reviews, production tips and philosophy of ministry discussions are all part of the three weekly posts. Written by Mike Sessler.

A few weeks back, I was having lunch with a young TD. He was telling me about his experiences coming into a church with a much older volunteer tech team, and how he was able to rally them together into a well-functioning team. I said, “That’s great because finding good volunteers is one of the hardest things most TDs have to do.” As a natural people person, he asked why it tended to be so hard. As I shared with him my answer, it occurred to me that this might make a good post.

What’s Your Type?

A number of years ago, I was in a career change process. During that process, I took the Meyers-Briggs personality type assessment. Thankfully, not only did I take the assessment and get a result, I had a certified assessor interpret the results for me. That was the best part. I am an INTP; Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving kind of guy.

That all made sense to me. What I didn’t know is that the 16 personality types are clustered around the four sets of middle letters; ST, SF, NT, NF. He told me something that I’m going to come back to in a minute that will blow your mind. But first, here’s an observation I’ve made over the years. Most people that gravitate towards the technical arts are NTs. In fact, almost every person I’ve asked in the last 5 years has told me they are an NT, usually an INTx.

The I makes perfect sense; we tend to be introverted, and thus we prefer the relative safety of a quiet tech booth with only a few people around us instead of a crazy children’s classroom with 30 people. Intuitive also makes sense. We tend to just know how stuff works. People that are good at mixing may not be able to explain why they set the EQ the way they did, they just know it was the right thing to do and it sounded better. People who rock at lighting just know the right time to bring them up and bring them down. We’re also thinkers, we live inside our own heads. We like long walks to our thoughts. The P/J continuum seems to be more of a wild car, and I’m not sure it has much bearing on what I want to talk about, so we’ll table that for now.

We Are Not Legion

So back to the thing my interpreter told me. He informed me that the worlds population was made up of roughly 4% NT people, roughly distributed at 1% each in the four NT types. Stop and let that sink in for a minute. The people that are more than likely to volunteer to do tech at your church make up 4% of the population at large.

Let’s assume that your church congregation has a roughly typical distribution of personality types, and let’s do some math. If you’re a 500 person church, that means there are roughly .04x500 or 20 people that would have the personality type that gravitates toward tech. A 100 person church has about 4. A thousand church might have 40.

Now, those are the people that might be prospective candidates. That doesn’t take into account whether or not they have the desire, time or willingness to serve. But think about this: If you’re a TD at a mid-sized church of 1,000 (and technically, that’s a large church, but roll with me), your most likely potential pool of tech volunteers is 40 people. And if we apply the 80/20 principle to that, we’d find that about 8 of them would be willing to volunteer.

It’s Not Your Fault

One of my favorite scenes in Good Will Hunting is near the end when Dr. Maquire starts telling Will that it’s not his fault. He Will says he knows. Sean tells him again. And again and again and again until it finally beings to sink in. It’s a powerful moment. I like to tell TDs the same thing; it’s not your fault. I know many TDs who keep taking hits from leadership on their small tech team. The children’s department will put out a call for volunteers and get 60 people signed up. Tech will put out a call and we’ll get 2. And those two will only replace the two that left last month. It’s not your fault.

What we do is hard. It takes a lot of work, time and skill to master. Frankly, almost anyone could work in the children’s department. Almost anyone can be a greeter. About four percent of the world is likely to be in tech. And some of those people will be terrible at it.

There’s not a good answer to this, and I don’t have any secret tricks for making it better. If I can persuade him, I’m hoping to get this young TD to write some articles for us because he’s actually quite good at building teams. But the bottom line is that it’s hard. It’s hard for all of us, so don’t feel bad. Hopefully, this makes you feel a little better.

Test the Theory

In closing, if you know your Meyer’s-Briggs profile, leave it in the comments below. I’d like to see if this holds. Like I said, almost everyone I’ve asked in the last 5 years has been an NT, but I’m always up for a larger sample. Even if I have to re-think my theory.